Frankenstein

I arrived in Geneva a few days later at about nine o'clock in the morning. Knowing that the gate would be shut before I could reach the city, I had spent the night before in the nearby town of Nyon. I then took a boat along the north shore of the lake to Geneva.
The place where the ships tied up did not seem very active for the time of the day, but this did not, by itself, surprise me. However, when I passed through the city gates I could no longer fail to notice the emptiness of the streets. It was clear, bright weather for the time of the year, and the hard-working people of the city should all have been at their businesses. But everywhere I looked, shops and offices were closed. Only a little thought was enough to tell me that I had made no mistake about the date. It was not a Sunday or a public holiday.
Soon I noticed another thing. The few people who were in the streets were all going the same way - towards the opposite side of the city, and they were in a hurry. They could only be going to Plainpalais, a piece of flat, open land on the far side of the River Arve where the men of the city, doing their soldier training, used to march up and down on Sunday mornings. It was also -as I remembered with sudden fear- the place of public hangings!
I started to run: across the old market-place, up the street where the city government meets, until, breathless, I joined a large, silent crowd on the city walls. I could see nothing, so I pulled myself up into the window of a house. Below the walls I could see an even larger crowd. All Geneva was there - and more, since there were many people from the small towns and villages around.
In the middle of the crowd was a raised wooden floor with a post in the middle and a rope hanging from the post. Among the few people standing there was a girl in a black dress. Even at that distance I knew it was Justine.
This crowd was not like any other crowd I had ever known. It was somehow strange and frightening that, although so large, it made so little noise. The air was thick with hate. They wanted that poor, frightened girl in black to die, and it was nearly time for her to do so.
As the last prayer was said, and the rope was placed round her neck I jumped down from my place in the window. My eyes filled with tears and I could watch no more. I turned away from the crowd into the peace and quiet of the Rue des Granges. But I had not gone far before I heard a deep cry of pleasure rise from the crowd, and I knew that Justine was no more. I stopped and placed my hand on the wall of a nearby house. Suddenly I felt quite ill.
As I stood there in the empty street trying to gather my thoughts, it came to my mind that the house I was resting against was well known to me. It was the town house of the Frankensteins. I walked on to the front door, which I found a little open. I pushed my way in. There was no servant in the hall, so I called. All was quiet. Had everybody gone to the hanging?
As a close friend of the family I felt free to walk upstairs; and finding the door of my friend's room open, I went in.
At first I thought the room was empty like the rest of the house, but then I saw somebody kneeling in a corner, his face pressed against the wall, and as still and silent as if he were dead.
"Victor!" I called quietly. He made no reply. I began to think he really was dead. I got hold of him and pulled him out of his corner. His face was wet with tears. "Victor, it's me, Henri. I have come back from Ingolstadt to help you." He still made neither sound nor movement.
"To help you," I said again.
"I am beyond help," he said at last.
"None of us are beyond help ... except (I could not help adding) ... poor Justine." As I spoke her name Frankenstein let out an unhappy cry.
"I could not help her," he said. "I tried ... God knows how hard I tried, but they would not listen. I told them again and again who had killed William, but I had no proof. In the end they thought I was mad."
"Then it was not Justine who killed him?"
"How could you ever have thought it was? That sweet young girl ..." His voice broke. "You knew her. That is enough."
"Then who did kill him?" I asked.
"Do you need to ask? Why, it was him."
"Him?"
"Yes, Yes, the one I made and gave life to, who has followed me here to destroy my happiness."

The Monster had followed him here? Had he not died in the fire, then, together with the de Lacys? I began to understand the full horror of what had happened. I had told the de Lacys where Frankenstein lived so that they might tell the Monster. It was my turn now to feel as Frankenstein felt. Was it really because of me that two people who never did anybody any harm had died. To think that I had once felt sorry for this creature. Why, why did I have to search for him in the forest? The thought that I was the cause of so much unhappiness was almost too much to bear.
I had told Frankenstein in my letter about my first visit to the de Lacys. Now I told him again about the fire and their frightful end. That, at least, owed nothing to me. Then I told him how my words to the de Lacys had led the Monster to Geneva.
My friend listened in silence. But it was clear even before he began to speak that he did not think I was the cause of these evils.
"He is devilishly clever," he said. "He would have found his way to us without your help - be sure of that. I know you meant well; but he does not return good for the good actions he receives. I have made something unchangeably evil, and I have not yet learned the full cost of his making."
"Surely," I replied, "all creatures are born with the possibility of becoming good or evil. This monster may yet be changed. Did not the de Lacys' kindness bring out the good in him?"
"Yes, and how did he return their kindness? Do you think that they died by, chance? No, they were destroyed by him just as surely as my William was."
I stared at him in horror at the idea. Did he mean that this creature had set light to the house of a family that had made him their friend? I could not believe it. There was no proof. And yet Frankenstein had planted doubt in my mind. If he really had killed William, there was nothing, however evil, that he could not have done. But again - did he murder William? I asked Frankenstein to tell me his story.
"You know," he said, "why I returned to Geneva in August after the failure of my experiment. It was not because I feared the monster I had made, or the people of Ingolstadt. I simply felt I had to escape from a town where I had wasted so much of my life. I knew that it was time to go home.
"For some months I lived happily with my family and began to make plans for further studies. I decided to leave science, and was thinking of studying music. Then one day, quite without warning, my happiness was destroyed for ever.
"Justine and William went out every day when the weather was fine. There was nothing to make us think that this day would be any different from all the other days: nothing in Justine's manner to suggest that she was planning murder. There are two stories about what happened after they left the house, Justine's and the court's. You have, I am sure, heard the court's. Your father must have written to tell you all about it. Now let me tell you Justine's.
"This is how she told it: after leaving home they walked up the hill, as they often did, to a little wood about half a kilometre away. Just before they got to the wood Justine sat down on a rock to do some needlework, while William picked flowers. He must have gone into the wood, because a little later she heard his voice coming from the trees together with another deeper, rougher voice. As she stood up to see who he was with, she heard him give a cry of fear. She ran into the wood and was just in time to see him being carried off under the arm of a huge, ugly, hairy man with no clothes on.
"She tried to pull William away from him, and succeeded for a short time in weakening his hold on the boy. But this only made the man seize William by the neck with one hand, and hold him at arm's length away from Justine. After keeping her off for a time with his other hand, he at last struck her so suddenly and so hard that she fell to the ground. When she woke up she found herself in the same place, and William beside her dead, with black fingermarks on his neck. His broken chain lay nearby. The man had quite disappeared.
"Think how the poor girl must have felt. Would they say it was all because she had let William go off into the wood by himself that he had died? Would they believe her story of a wild man whom nobody had ever seen before? All kinds of thoughts must have been mixed up in her mind; and I can understand why she did not want to go back to the house. So, with the gold chain still in her hand, she made the great mistake of running away. As you know, she got as far as Thonon, where her wild looks and strange manner caught the attention of the authorities. They held her there. Then the news of the murder arrived from Geneva."
"Are you quite sure that the wild man in Justine's story was ... your monster?" I asked.
"I was able to question Justine closely in prison, and what she told me makes me think that he may have changed since you last saw him. You say that in the forest he wore clothes. He now seems to have given up clothes completely, and there has been a growth of hair all over his body. But I have no doubt it is the same creature."
"What did you do when Justine was taken to prison?"
Frankenstein turned pale. "Everything ... everything I could to save her. I would have died in her place at the Plainpalais this morning if they had let me. But the trouble was that the authorities would not believe me. When I started talking about a monster I had made, they thought I was mad. And even if they had believed me, I could not have proved that it was the Monster that had killed William.
"I went to the wood, and found marks of feet, but they were not very clear. Besides it rained heavily the next night. So when I showed them to the authorities they said that they meant nothing. In the end I saw that my only hope of saving her was to prove that there really was a monster; and to do this I had to find him. I spent the next three weeks searching the mountains all around, but with no success."
"And Elizabeth?" I asked. "How did she take it?"
"Even without knowing what I knew, she did not believe that Justine was a murderer, and she did what she could to save her. But Justine would not save herself. She seemed to think that she was in some way the cause of William's death, and she no longer wished to live. She did not even try to say anything in her own favour in court. In the end even Elizabeth came to doubt her story."
Frankenstein looked very tired. "You must rest now," I said. "You trouble yourself too much, thinking that they died because of you. They did not."
"It was because of me," he replied. "And as for rest, there will be no rest for me until I find and destroy the creature I have made."

Source: Longman Classics